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ABSTRACT
Recent commentary has sounded the alarm about the effects of emerging technologies on strategic stability, yet the topic has received relatively little systematic scholarly attention. Will emerging technologies such as cyber, autonomous weapons, additive manufacturing, hypersonic vehicles, and remote sensing make the world more dangerous? Or is pessimism unwarranted? In this volume, we leverage international relations scholarship, historical data, and a variety of methodological approaches to discern the future implications of new technologies for international security. The findings suggest that new technologies can have multiple, conditional, and even contradictory effects on different aspects of strategic stability, and raise a host of important questions for future research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 For example, Brodie and Brodie, From Crossbow to H-Bomb; Dupuy, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare; Cohen, ‘A Revolution in Warfare’, 37–54; Krepinevich, ‘Cavalry to Computer’, 30–42; Mahnken, Technology and the American Way of War; Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power.
2 For example, Brimley, et al., Game Changers; Haffa and Dalta, Hypersonic Weapons.
3 Ellman et al., Assessing the Third Offset Strategy, 1.
4 Hagel, ‘Memorandum for the Deputy Secretary of Defense’, https://www.scribd.com/document/246766701/SecDef-Hagel-Innovation-Memo-2014–11-15-OSD013411-14.
5 US Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf.
6 For example, see Brodie and Brodie, From Crossbow to H-Bomb, 195–96; and Dupuy, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, especially chapter 23.
7 See Biddle, ‘The Past as Prologue’, 1–74.
8 For example, Biddle and Zirkle, ‘Technology, Civil-Military Relations, and Warfare in the Developing World’, 171–212; Stulberg, ‘Managing Military Transformations’, 489–528.
9 For example, Sagan and Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons; Narang, Gartzke, and Kroenig, (eds.), Nonproliferation Policy and Nuclear Posture; Sechser and Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy.
10 Schelling, Arms and Influence; George and Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy.
11 See Powell, ‘Bargaining Theory and International Conflict’, 1–30.
12 Brito and Intriligator. ‘Arms Races and Proliferation’, 109–164; Glaser, ‘The Causes and Consequences of Arms Races’, 251–276.
13 Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations; Fearon, ‘Signaling Foreign Policy Interests’, 68–90; Fuhrmann and Sechser, ‘Signaling Alliance Commitments’, pp. 919–35.
14 Smoke, War: Controlling Escalation; Pillar, Negotiating Peace: War Termination as a Bargaining Process.
15 The international security literature offers multiple, sometimes competing, definitions of strategic stability. Recognising that there is no consensus on the meaning of the term, the articles in this issue adopt an expansive view of strategic stability, including both conventional and nuclear weapons and covering a wide variety of phenomena along the continuum between peace and war. For useful discussions of the varied meanings of strategic stability, see Colby and Gerson, (eds.), Strategic Stability; and Rubin and Stulberg, (eds.), The End of Strategic Stability?
16 On the implications for alliances, see also Mehta, ‘Assurance in an Emerging Technology Environment’.
17 Garfinkel and Dafoe, ‘How Does the Offense-Defense Balance Scale?’, 736–763.
18 Horowitz, ‘When Speed Kills: Autonomous Weapon Systems, Deterrence, and Stability’, 764–788.
19 Williams, ‘Asymmetric Arms Control and Strategic Stability’, 789–813.
20 Volpe, ‘Dual-Use Distinguishability’, 814–840.
21 Schneider, ‘The Capability/Vulnerability Paradox and Military Revolutions’, 841–863.
22 Talmadge, ‘Would China Go Nuclear?’, 50–92; Caverley and Sechser, ‘Military Technology and the Duration of Civil Conflict’, 704–720.
23 Gartzke, ‘Blood and Robots’.
24 Talmadge, ‘Emerging Technologies and Intra-War Escalation Risks’, 864–887.
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Notes on contributors
Todd S. Sechser
Todd S. Sechser is the Pamela Feinour Edmonds and Franklin S. Edmonds, Jr. Discovery Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Virginia and Senior Fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. He is coauthor of the book Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge University Press, 2017). His research on nuclear security, coercive diplomacy, and military technology has appeared in academic journals such as International Organization, the American Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, and the Non-Proliferation Review, as well as media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and Christian Science Monitor. Dr. Sechser was previously a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a John M. Olin National Security Fellow at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.
Neil Narang
Neil Narang is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California. From 2015-2016, he served as a Senior Advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy on a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship. Previously, he held positions at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his BA in Molecular Cell Biology and Political Science from UC Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego.
Caitlin Talmadge
Caitlin Talmadge is Associate Professor of Security Studies in the School of Foreign at Georgetown University, as well as Senior Non-Resident Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. She is author of the award-winning book, The Dictator’s Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes (Cornell, 2015), as well as co-author of U.S. Defense Politics: The Origins of Security Policy (Routledge, 2017). Her publications include articles in International Security, Security Studies, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, The Non-Proliferation Review, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Dr. Talmadge was previously a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a John M. Olin National Security Fellow at Harvard University, as well as a consultant to the Office of Net Assessment at the U.S. Department of Defense. She is a graduate of Harvard (A.B., Government) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., Political Science).